Chapter 5957

Inside the tower, years had slipped by like silent water, unnoticed except for the extra weight in Jared’s bones and the deeper hush in the surrounding chaotic aura.

A breath later, his eyes snapped open, the gesture so sudden that the stillness cracked as though someone had struck a gong in a monastery just before dawn.

Soundless thunder rolled from inside his body, not through air but through the weave of energy itself, rattling the bronze ribs of the Pentacarna Tower.

The chaotic aura that hung inside the tower skittered away from him, coiling against the walls in restless waves, as though the building had suddenly remembered that it could drown.

Light gathered in his pupils, wet and star-deep, and for an instant four muted colors-ash, prism, molten gold, pale gold-flickered across the black like sparks that knew too many secrets.

The ragged hole that once gaped in his chest had sealed without scar; skin lay smooth and luminous, as if glazed porcelain had borrowed the warmth of living flesh.

On the back of his right hand, the intertwined sigils of the five elements and earth-fire showed sharper lines, no longer inked but seemingly baked into bone before he was born.